


The Ghost of the Moon

by Trapelo_Road475



Category: Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-03
Updated: 2013-07-03
Packaged: 2017-12-17 12:52:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/867750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trapelo_Road475/pseuds/Trapelo_Road475
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bruce and Steve in the spring.  Springtime makes everyone a little crazy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Ghost of the Moon

It's spring when Bruce bolts.

Cold, wet, Atlantic spring. Everything all smeared and gray. Not even a hope of green yet - just mud and vestiges of dirty ice curled up in the gutters and all last fall's leaves and dog shit everywhere. 

It's shit weather, but they have a place - him and Bruce, and Vini and Danny - and maybe it's a grimy little place that leans just-so to one side like it's trying to get out of the wind, and the paint's peeling, but it is their place and they do okay there. Bruce's old friend Tex helps them out now and then when things get tight, and he's the one who found them the place anyhow. Tex is one of maybe five people on earth that Bruce actually listens to enough of the time for anything to make a dent. There's Tex, and Bruce's mother, and Steve is pleased to count himself among that little number as well. 

Most of the time, anyway.

Things have settled up, between them, since that first night with the sleet smacking the windows, and the week where Bruce was a total moron, and their second time which was even better than the first. It's a little like learning a new instrument, or listening to a song the third or fourth time and really _hearing_ it, all the hums and crackles and spats and whispers and voices. Like playing it live and feeling the blood coursing hard. 

It's like Bruce showing him - all tentative and shy and stupidly awkward - that fat notebook of his, torn and thumb-grimed, letting him into it, letting him _see_ it, like he's seeing Bruce's bones in that tilted scrawl, and he probably is. 

The house has three rooms and they are supposed to be sharing the big room that's the second floor entirely but _sharing_ the room would imply they are actually sleeping in two different beds.

If Vini and Danny know, they don't ask.

They probably know. Bruce has spent the last few months figuring out exactly _how loud_ Steve can go, and Steve gives as good as he gets. Bruce will go for ages panting and panting and tightening up and tightening up until he finally cries out, if it's good he just screams for it, if it's _real_ good he makes this wailing, half-broke noise and goes still. Steve likes that sound. Fucking music. Like Bruce begging.

One time Bruce made that noise and Vini or Danny pounded hard on the floor below and said something about cats on broomhandles and yeah, they probably know.

They've settled things up. Steve can handle Bruce's wild edge, and Bruce makes peace when Steve's less than polished interpersonal skills get them into trouble. And the sex ain't anything to sneeze at, either. Like nothing he's ever felt, or thought to feel really. Watching Orbison and Elvis and all of them on television used to give him a funny thrill, but he never dreamt like he did until he met Bruce and saw his eyes black as road-ice on the curve. Full to the brim with intelligence, ideas, tongue and hands full of music just busting at the seams.

Steve couldn't imagine why anybody _wouldn't_ want to be near Bruce.

By the spring, things are fine, Bruce has little fits of some kind of guilt or moodiness, they scrap, or Steve learns to leave him alone, give him space, and he'll come around, usually with a little hesitance, maybe a new segment of his notebook filled up. Bruce never says he's sorry for clamming up, but his eyes sort of pine, and he'll get his guitar and sit close to Steve while plucking out a few notes.

There is, along with a nasty span of fucking _weather_ \- a little snow turns to a lot of rain turns to a little snow, a lot of sleet and everything loses color for most of a month - an equal, and much more fun, three-week span where Bruce has gone fucking _electric_ or something. He fills three notebooks, attempts to convince them to play two or three gigs in a day (they veto this), is on his guitar, or on Steve's bass, all hours of the day - once, he tries to go for Danny's keys, and Danny almost pops him one - and the sex they have is the most intense thing Steve's ever had with _anybody._ Not like he has much to compare it to, but even in the movies, he's pretty sure people don't screw for two hours straight, with one of them passing out after and the other just getting right back up and writing even more but it's near the end of those three weeks, near the end.

Things just aren't so much fun anymore. Steve's worn out, and Vini and Danny are spending less and less time at the house. Bruce isn't so much energetic as he is on edge, and it all comes to a head on the first clear night in a month, the dead leaves out on the street sounding like spider legs in the high wind.

They fight. It's not like they've never fought before but they _fight_ , now, and Steve doesn't even know what it's about. Something about the toaster. It's three in the morning. Bruce is screaming at him. Steve gives as good as he gets. Bruce grabs his guitar and Steve's gut _lurches_ because Bruce fucking loves that guitar, more than maybe anything except his own mom. But Bruce just, in his clumsy fit, snaps the strings and drops it on the floor and then looks frantic, and bolts.

Bolts. Just fucking. Gone. 

Steve feels like deja vu. Like he's seen this in little installments, rehearsals of a kind, through the time he's known Bruce. Through the time they've been together. Bruce bolts and, after waiting almost an hour, Steve picks up Bruce's guitar, touches the frets, the bridge, smears a bead of blood where Bruce must've nicked his finger yanking at the strings. He brings it upstairs. He doesn't know why. He sits and watches through the dormer window as the night passes.

Steve wakes up feeling dim and out of sorts and it's just dawn, the sky soft blues and purples.

Bruce isn't home.

Worry sinks into his gut. 

He would laugh it off. But he looks at the wastebasket in the corner and he sees what remains of half a notebook.

Something's not right, Bruce isn't home, the guitar strings busted, half a notebook shredded up in the dusty corners of the room they share in the bed where the skin is warm and Bruce's voice passes over his ears like the easy sound of a train in the dark. 

But he settles himself, and when Danny comes back and asks if Bruce is around (warily), Steve uses all of his will to shrug and say he left the night before, maybe he's gone to see his mom, or Tex, or somebody. Maybe got in his car to go for a drive.

"His car's still here," Danny says, and tromps to his room. "He didn't touch my keys, did he?"

"No, they're safe."

Steve waits til nightfall, when Vini comes in. 

"Seen Bruce?"

"Nah."

Bruce is fine. Bruce left in his shirtsleeves without taking his jacket or his car. Bruce is fine. 

Steve calls Tex up from a payphone down the block.

"You seen Bruce today?"

"Nope. Why?"

"No reason."

Wouldn't do to make his mother worry, so Steve goes home, scrapes up dinner, and goes to bed late, feeling like the spring-spine of the notebook in the trash is staring at him or something.

Another day goes by. 

Even Danny and Vini are curious.

Steve ventures back to the payphone. 

Bruce's mother insists all Bruce's friends call her Adele. Steve can't make himself.

"Is Bruce around?"

"Oh, no, haven't seen him. Is everything alright?"

Steve can't lie to her. But he won't tell the truth. "Oh, he left for - you know, one of his jaunts, there was something I need to tell him, let him know if you see him, please?"

Steve knows she doesn't believe him.

By the third day he's _worried_ , like honest to god, gut twisted, can't look at the toaster, sure as fuck can't look at Bruce's sad guitar, just worried about him. He takes Bruce's car because Bruce left his keys, too, and takes a roll around his favored haunts. Looking. Asks Tex again. Asks around the clubs and bars. 

By sheer dumb luck, as the sun is setting, he passes a park, where he sees Bruce - a familiar, scrawny, awkward figure - sitting on a swingset rocking pony, sideways and pushing a little, sneakers in the cold mud. 

"Bruce," he says, the moon rising through the still-pale sky. The wind is picking up.

Bruce looks at him with those lost and pining eyes. He looks tired. 

"Bruce, where've you been?"

Bruce looks down. The rocking pony squeaks under his weight. Just looks at his hands, dirty, his arms scratched up like he's been running in the woods or something. He looks like he's lucky the cops didn't pick him up and dump his skinny ass in the drunk tank or worse.

There's a long silence while the stars begin to spark and the moon becomes a man and not a ghost in the high dark sky. 

"Can we go home?" Bruce says. Soft. His voice sounds like he's gone a four-hour set. Just gone. The ghost of the moon stole it. "I wanna go home."

Steve lays a hand on his arm and Bruce looks up, soft, unreadable, lonely looking. Bruce follows him to the car and climbs in the passenger seat and picks at the worn upholstery. 

"Don't you ever fucking do that again."

"Sorry," Bruce mumbles, against the door.

"Bruce - " Steve lays a hand firm, deliberate on his shoulder, not just the touch, but here, now, _fucking look at me, Bruce,_ " - promise me you won't fucking do that again."

"I - "

But when Bruce looks at him really looks at him, Steve can see there isn't any promise but scared, like Bruce would do anything to promise but he doesn't know what happened or how to make it stop.

All the little things he saw before. They were important. 

"I ain't like my dad," Bruce says, and Steve has no idea what that means to Bruce but he nods anyway.

"No, you ain't."

Steve takes them both home, the slow, long route, so it's good and dark, and Danny is in the kitchen but doesn't ask, and they go upstairs and Bruce picks up his guitar off the window seat where it's been gathering dust for three days.

"You got a set of strings?"

"Think so."

"Can I - "

"Yeah."


End file.
